Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Nekobook

Nekobook Preview
Nekobook is finally released! Our 2014 catgirl charity calendar featuring many of our stunning catgirls is not available to purchase from our store with all profits going to cat shelters around Australia. Nekobook is Neko Nation's charity initiative that was designed to help contribute towards cat shelters looking after cats and kittens needing desperate help and funding to save them from some of the sad harsh realities that take place with a lack of funding. Nekobook aims to support 5 cat charities around Australia. - Flicks Cat Rescue (Adelaide) - Little Paws Kitten Rescue (Brisbane) - Ingrids Heaven (Melbourne) - Cat Haven (Perth) - Cat Rescue (Sydney) This is you chance to help cats and kittens in need all around Australia and being rewarded with a years supply of pretty catgirls to look at! Nekobook can be bought online here <3

Monday, November 11, 2013

A very Neko Food Guide

So one of the fun things about doing Neko Nation is travelling around Australia and getting to experience a bunch of really interesting and awesome Japanese restaurants and food. We've had many awesome locals show us around Australia and take us to lots of amazing food places around Australia and while taste is a very subjective and opinionated matter (plus we wanted to review more accessible places for your budget than fancy $50+ meal restaurants) these were some of our favourites and also stood out as being unique and interesting places to their own city.

Adelaide - The Crepe's Story

The Crepe Story For those who've been to Harajuku will know all about the famous Harajuku Crepes, cheap, easy and tasty, they are a memorable trip for anyone who has made the trip over to Japan. However for those stuck in Adelaide, The Crepe Story offers an experience close enough to what you'd experience in Japan. Run by absolutely adorable and cutely dressed Asian girls in pink maid outfits and the massively pink store which sticks out like crazy in the midst of Rundle Mall. With a good variety of savoury and sweet crepes, it's definitely a unique experience that brings back memories of Japan, or a taste of Japan for those yet to go!

Brisbane - Mos Burger

Mos Burger Mos Burger the famous Japanese burger chain has made it's way into Brisbane Australia, after a successful trial store in Sunnybank, Mos Burger has expanded to multiple outlets around Brisbane. For those yet to experience Mos Burger they specialise in unique Japanese style burgers, which includes many interesting Japanese flavours such as the use of rice burgers, seafood, teriyaki and delicious Japanese sauces. Rather than serving it up with Coke, iced tea is their preferred option and they take much pride on their great service. While for those familiar with Australian and American burgers, while it's tempting to unwrap the whole burger, DON'T! The burgers may look smaller in size, but they are much greatly stacked, to the point where they appear much spherical and taking it out of the wrapping will see all your ingredients fall out!

Melbourne - Doki Doki Café

Doki Doki Station   A maid café in Melbourne, visit Moe Mall which features Doki Doki Station on Fridays, Saturdays and Sunday to get your maid café fix. A visit to Doki Doki station is memorable one, the maids being some of the most adorable and cutest maids both in terms of looks and personality and absolutely awesome menu and atmosphere and more importantly it's a maid café in Australia that's open every week! Also hosting many special events, gaming and just in general being a great place to chill out without any time limit during quieter periods. This is the only maid café that we are aware off which is constantly operating outside of a convention and definitely one of our favourites.

Perth - Iku Sushi

Cheeseburger Sushi Easily our favourite sushi place in all of Australia. Iku Sushi definitely sticks out as our favourite sushi place in all of Australia. The most amazing graphics are featured inside featured lots of cute kittens, amazingly adorablely painted pink ventilation and a great variety of tasty drinks, from natural Soda, Cherry Coke, Dr. Pepper, Irn Bru, Ramune and many amazing drinks. Plus lots of amazing meals from bento boxes to curries, including specialties such as their onion rings and cheese kastu. The best part is their main famous and unique offering Cheeseburger sushi, think this is a terrible combination that wouldn't work? Think again, cheeseburger sushi is the fastest sushi to be snapped up at any Neko Nation ever, as pictured above, imagine combining bacon and cheese with sushi, it's a godlike taste that those in Perth are lucky to be able to experience!

Sydney - Mizuya

Mizuya Enter down the staircase into Mizuya and our first impression was being blown away by the amazing atmosphere down inside the restaurant, these pictures do not do the place justice, the cherry blossom trees, lighting and booths give this place a majestic feeling and going into one of the booths gives an absolutely intimate feel and dining experience. When you first go inside a booth, the first thing you'll notice is the screen, it's a touchscreen where you order food, there's no waiting for a waiter or waitress, order whenever you want, which is really convenient if you're with a lot of people, rather than waiting for everyone to be ready to order, everyone can order whenever they want plus ordering from a touch screen feels like it's from the future. More importantly the food tastes amazing, in particular as odd as it sounds crocodile karaage was one our favourites but there's so many good things off the menu to eat and drink since the variety at this place is insane, a definite place you need to check out for all you Sydney peeps or anyone visiting, the food and atmosphere is unforgettable.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Behind the Scenes

Welcome to a quick behind the scenes look at setting up a Neko Nation show. While Neko Nation starts at 8pm, for the setup crew, work starts as early as 9-10am and sometime doesn't end till 9am the next day! There is a lot of integral planning that goes into a show and setup is the last major hurdle that we encounter, we literally take an empty room and turn it into a mega party night thanks to the help of our awesome team, here's a bit of a look at some of the pics of the process. 3-transcontinental-hotel-brisbane-city
This is what we would rock up too, a pretty straight forward empty room, dancefloor, DJ area, you could probably make a simple 18th birthday with sparse lighting, sound and basic DJ gear. Far from Neko Nation's standards, we've got a lot of work to do to transform all this around before the show start later on in the night! 261320_558259577528546_1497544015_n
First thing is first, we get all the gear to our venue, we push baggage limits on flights and we fill up a car or two or sometimes a van up to the brim with all our technical gear to get this show in motion. We dump everything on the floor, start sorting out where things need to go and make a start on the setup.
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The preparation of the staging area. While some areas don't need much work such as the dancefloor and bar which more or less are good to go, the creation of a staging area is one of our first priorities for the event. In this case, we've got a temporary stage that we've rented up and created for the Perth show.
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This was taken partway through the setup for our Brisbane show in May 2013. This was one of the most interesting and ambitious new setups we tried for a show, featuring LED Sakura trees, industrial fans and an awesome new staging setup which would go with our live performance LeLe. As you can see, the setup is coming together but it doesn't have that special look with all the lights on. 886157_628603977154802_1629412273_o
When the lights go out! The venue starts to look really unique and special as we do a test run of all the lighting, sound, tech gets all put to the test before all the guests come within an hour or two. 164970_10151921569896040_514764691_n
It's showtime!

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

S3RL in Perth!

S3RL
DJ S3RL is making his way down to Neko Nation Purrth! Known for his intense stage presence and floor filling musical abilities, be sure to watch out for S3RL as he mixes up a storm and continues to keep the crowd jumping with all his future productions. It has been a few years since S3RL has last played an event in Perth and Neko Nation is very excited to be bringing him back over for an absolutely mega show! A well known name in the happy hardcore scene, he has made his name well known in the anime and pop culture scene for his tracks such as "Pika Girl", "MTC", "Kamehameha", "Princess Bubblegum", "Neon Genesis", "Butterfly" and much more . 2013 has proven to be a huge year for S3RL having recently just toured USA at raves and anime conventions. S3RL is set to play at Neko Nation Purrth on September 28th. Tickets are available from the absolutely awesome Tokyo Underground 890 Hay Street, Perth. More info Facebook Event Page    

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Hey Teacher EP

Ramen Records
The cult Neko Nation track "Hey Teacher" has finally gotten an EP release thanks to Ramen Records! For those unfamiliar with Hey Teacher by FTFX, it's the most requested track in Neko Nation history. An oddball request posted up for Neko Nation Adelaide a few years ago that eventually gained a cult status and created the infamous "Will this be played?" meme known to regularly pop up on the Neko Nation Adelaide pages. Noc.V, Shingo DJ and many other talented producers worked together to make a remix CD, which is free to download but the record is looking to accept donations to help cover some of the costs such as the artwork and owing the producers a drink or two. Donations over $5 receive a free packet of Mi Goreng. We would like to thank Ramen Records for the delicious Mi Goreng sent to us. <3 You can get the album from Ramen Records.

Sunday, July 7, 2013

New Website, AVCon, Vocaloid

New Website!










We created a new website and is looking absolutely amazing, we are absolutely in love with switching to the new Wordpress website which looks sexy but also efficient in terms of navigation, loading times and mobile compatibility.  The original website was originally created in 2011 when it was supposed to be a small experimental Perth event, we kept adding and trying to expand on it but it was slow, clunky and Flash just doesn't cut it any more websites.

Check it out at www.nekonation.com

AVCon









Neko Nation once again returns to AVCon on the 13th of July, one of the highlights of our year, AVCon is by far our favourite con in Australia, the best organised and one of the most fun cons to get your cosplay and game on and Adelaide's crowd is well known for being incredibly passionate and into it, this is the city who has an anime con that is rated as a top 20 tourist attractions!  Neko Nation AVCon is a free all ages show, with free sushi served by catgirls, absolutely awesome DJ's playing tunes from 6pm-midnight and the biggest crowd that you'll ever see at a show and the only dance party at an anime convention (Amaranth doesn't really have anything on us, seriously, XD)

Vocaloid Night Sydney











Neko Nation has been asked to come down to help out with SMASH presents Vocaloid Night 2013!  Vocaloid legends Hachioji P and livetune are making their way down from Japan for an absolutely unmissable night where Japanese Vocaloid superstars are making an appearance for a set at SMASH.  It's a rare experience to get any Japanese musicians coming down to Australia, let alone famous ones of this calibur for a spectacular night that we can't wait to be a part off!



Sunday, June 30, 2013

May-June 2013

We head into May and June, which ends up being our first proper tour of 2013, 4 shows within 6 weeks, oh it was certainly one interesting journey and adventure!

Brisbane - May 2013
This is the first show on the tour and did we start off with a mega bang here!  After the first sold out show of the year in Brisbane, which was also definitely problematic and a half due to hot weather and other niggling problem.  Neko Brisbane came back big time, new venue, staging, management, DJ's, catgirls, décor, a new live act and in general everything we completely revolutionised Neko Nation once again!
LELE was the brand new addition, the amazing J-Pop singer put on a stunning debut show at Neko Nation Brisbane to the delight of an awesomely charged crowd, a new stunning stage complete with glowing Sakura trees, a new crazy "Stargate" projector and the new venue was an absolute hit.  Neko Nation Brisbane has always had one fun and crazy crowd and it was definitely the best start to the tour!

Adelaide - May 2013
For a long time we've had people always suggest to do a Pokémon theme show and while in 2013 we decided to get ready of "themed shows" we thought we'd actually make this one happen in Adelaide.  A brand new venue in Producer's Bar which was packed out and was the fastest selling out Neko Nation event in history!

A long 8 month gap between shows, meant that people were really excited about this one, the new venue offered for a unique new dancefloor, awesome new outside area and one of the most unforgettable nights in a long time.  The cosplay at this event was by far some of the best we've ever seen at an event and Adelaide definitely showed Australia how it's done there!

Perth - June 2013

Neko returned to Perth for another absolutely amazing event at Gilkisons, probably one of our favourite venues on tour, a mega dance floor that was lit up by the new Sakura tree made for a brand new stunning looking dancefloor thanks to teaming up with FORCE, to also be on the safe side, there was a new ventilation system installed even in Winter we still wanted to keep things cool!

It was an absolutely amazing night, the return to Perth was a very emotional, after two year, Neko HQ moved back to it's hometown of Perth and while Adelaide was fun, the hometown welcoming and party was absolutely insane and emotionally charged with another extremely mega night which absolutely raised the roof!

Sydney - June 2013
Last stop, Sydney!  Sydney is considered the most interesting Neko Nation of them all, they have the most energetic, vibrant and varied crowd.  Sydney is known for it's unique rave twist on the Neko Nation concept, while it still stays true to it's roots, Neko Sydney does stand out as a late night epic spectacular.

Our new team has been working tirelessly to put in all sorts of awesome new lighting and displays to make Sydney loads of fun and our team in Sydney is definitely one of the most interesting to work with.  The night is long and a tiring one for us but it's the most intense party and one we had loads of fun with!